


Through the Camera Lens

by Piscaria



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 21:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12465912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/pseuds/Piscaria
Summary: While snapping photos at the abandoned community center, Haley comes across something unexpected.





	Through the Camera Lens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/gifts).



The late afternoon sun bathes the old community center in golden light, exposing every cobweb and crack in the siding. Crouched in the yellow grass, Haley lines up the shot: the dusty clock over the front door, the overgrown window boxes and the ivy climbing up the shutters. In autumn, even the overgrown vegetation is yellow, lifeless. The camera clicks. Rising, she checks to make sure she didn’t get grass stains on her skirt. 

So much symbolism in one abandoned building. She could even make it a series on rural decay, juxtaposing images of the abandoned community center with the sterile precision of the Joja Mart. Stepping closer to the building, she snaps a few shots of the finer details: the faded “Pelican Town” written over one window, the spiderweb stretching from one of the columns framing the door to the roof, an eery shot of her own reflected face in the dusty window. 

It’s only by a whim that she tries the door. She knows it will be locked — teenagers always used to try sneaking into this building when she was in school, and Mayor Lewis finally locked it tight in exasperation. But to her surprise, the handle turns easily beneath her hand. She bites her lip, stepping into the quiet room.  
Inside, the photo opportunities are even better. The rooms are empty, save the shining gold plates on the floor. She snaps photo after photo. The cracked and dusty fish tank. The vegetation growing up from the missing floorboards. The strange, leaf-covered hut in one corner. The bulletin board with its decades-old flyers and help wanted ads. 

She can tell that she’s not the first person who’s come poking around in here. Another pair of footprints are clearly outlined in the dust, heavy work boots, if the tread is anything to go by. She steps into a pair of them carefully and snaps a photo of her own pink pumps outlined by the larger footprints. 

Cautiously, she explores the building. The first room she comes to has heaps of fruits and vegetables piled between the barrels lining the walls as if in offering. She snaps photos of them, but doesn’t linger too long. Something about it makes the skin on her arms and the back of her necks tingle. It feels almost like the room is holding its breath, waiting for something, though she can’t imagine what. 

One of the rooms is in much better shape than the others. Cheerful wallpaper covers the walls and purple carpet hugs the floor. The furniture is free of the dust that coats every other room of the community center. She photographs a desk with an old-fashioned typewriter, an easel holding a blank piece of paper, a spinning wheel beside a bookshelf full of fiber that her sister Emily would go nuts over. There’s a low table with a couple of boxes of crayons set out on it. She imagines Penny and the kids gathered around it doing their lessons, and feels something unexpected tug at her chest. She was only a kid herself when the community center shut down, but she can’t remember ever coloring in this room or watching the fish swim circles in the tank outside. Why did the town abandon this building? This room was proof that it had so much potential.

She snaps a few more photos after leaving the craft room. The safe, long vandalized, its heavy door hanging from a single hinge. The mushrooms growing in a patch of exposed dirt beneath the missing stones of the boiler room floor. A single, gleaming star set in the mantle over the fireplace. But her heart isn’t in it, and she leaves as the light begins to fade.

She doesn’t see the creatures until she develops the film that night. At first, she thinks it’s a flaw in the developing film, a shadowy blob peeking out from behind one leg of the fish tank. But then, she spots another caught scurrying across the floor of the boiler room carrying a leaf. Two more are frolicking on the floor before the strange hut. 

Haley isn’t prone to superstition. She wants to say the creatures are rats, though it gives her the creeps to think she might have spent her afternoon poking around a rat-infested building. But she staged each of these shots carefully, examining every detail before snapping the photo. One rat might, possibly, have escaped her attention (disgusting as that was to think about) but three? There’s no way she would have missed that.  
Besides, as the photographs develop, the creatures emerge in more detail: round blobs with stubby legs and thin arms. A single antenna rises from the top of each creature’s head. 

For a long moment, she can only stare at the photos, heart pounding in her chest. Goosebumps rise on her arms, despite the warmth of the dark room. None of these creatures were there when she took the photographs. She knows that. Yet the proof on her film is undeniable. For a single, terrifying moment, she wonders if they’re here now, hiding beneath her bed, gathered in the corners of the darkroom, watching her. 

She hangs the last of the photos up to dry with a shaking hand, and hurries to escape the dark room, taking refuge with a fashion magazine in the kitchen, where Emily is stirring the spaghetti sauce Gus taught her to make. For once, Hailey doesn’t mind when her sister sets her to work. Adding pasta to the pot of boiling water and washing the dishes in the sink helps her get her mind off the creatures in her photographs. She’s careful not to look too closely at the floor.


End file.
